A brief reflection on how we navigate institutional hierarchies
This framework emerged from years of narrative inquiry with Dalit leaders navigating institutions where certain leaders were not present in the design. The Climbing Trap is one mechanism within Caste Mindset Theory's Marrow in the Bone framework — examining how hierarchy embeds in the body and regenerates across generations.
Hierarchical systems reproduce themselves not only by excluding marginalized leaders — but by incorporating them into their own evaluative logic as the condition of advancement.
The trap is not the price of the lock. It is the price of the key.
The marrow is what the hierarchy deposits through the climb — the beliefs, reflexes, and standards for measuring worth that begin as the institution's logic and end up feeling like your own judgment.
This game asks what inclusion has required of the people these institutions invited — and what they leave behind to stay.
Each time a space that was not built for you requires a demonstration before it listens, something is spent. The cognitive and emotional cost accumulates — quietly, invisibly — until the resources that might have fuelled structural challenge are already gone.
The hierarchy's evaluative standards stop feeling like the hierarchy's and start feeling like common sense. The climber who paid the most on a particular ladder becomes, in time, the person who enforces it most rigorously — not out of cruelty, but because the standard was installed before they knew it was happening.
You hold the title. You attend the meetings. Your presence signals that the institution is inclusive. But the decisions that would change the structure were made through processes the position does not automatically reach. The institution counts on this.
Five ladders. Five scenarios. All set in equality-claiming institutions — places where stated values and structural decisions do not always move together. No right answers. Only honest ones.
People navigate these ladders differently depending on the position they hold — the cost differs, and so does the marrow deposit.
The scenarios are not only for people in formal leadership positions. Students navigate every one of these ladders — in classrooms, in advising offices, in student organizations, in every room where they are asked to prove they belong.
Takes about four to five minutes. Responses are anonymous and contribute to research on how people navigate institutional hierarchies.
You will read five scenarios. Each one describes a moment in a workplace, a classroom, or a community where the person in the scenario faces a pressure to fit. For each scenario, you choose one of three responses:
There is no right answer. There is only your honest choice. Take your time on each scenario.
Scenario text here.
What would you do?
Looking back across the five scenarios, which one asked the most of you? Which ladder weighed the heaviest?
If you would like, share a brief moment when you faced one of these pressures — in a workplace, classroom, or community. Your contribution may inform future research and may be referenced anonymously in scholarly work.
The question is: what did the climb deposit?
How institutions reproduce themselves through the leaders they exclude — and the leaders they incorporate.
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The trap loosens when the climber carries a standard the institution did not produce. A measure of worth that did not come from the hierarchy they entered — and cannot be revoked by it.
That standard, when it exists, arrives long before any degree — carried in a different body, learned on a different kind of floor. It cannot be granted by this institution or revoked by it.
Where is yours? Not as a concept. As a specific source — a community, a person, a practice, a tradition — that gives you a measure of worth this institution cannot grant or take away.
Which choice in this game cost you the most — and what does that cost tell you about which ladder has deposited most deeply in you?
How others have answered.
Aggregate across all consented sessions; no individual response is shown.
Your anonymous responses have been recorded and will contribute to research on how people navigate institutional hierarchies.
If anything in this activity brought up difficult feelings, the following resources are available:
For questions about the research, contact Dr. Thirupal at thirupal@gonzaga.edu.
The Climbing Trap is grounded in the Marrow in the Bone Framework, developed in:
Thirupal, M. (2025). Caste mindset: The marrow in the bone—Stories of Dalit leaders in India (Order No. 32003483). ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. View on ProQuest
You have not participated in the research, and no data has been recorded.
If anything in the information you read brought up difficult feelings, the following resources are available: